Posts Tagged ‘kaizen’

One of the goals of most quality improvement efforts is to eliminate waste. Have you ever gone to a training program or class and that it was a waste of time? Here is a definition and example of the waste in training. Taking out waste will save time and money.

Waste is defined as anything that doesn’t add value. Eliminating waste is one of the easiest and least costly thing to do because it usually means deleting training programs or portions of training programs. If a learning activity doesn’t improve proficiency or shorten time to proficiency, it’s waste. Here are some examples of waste.

1. The Forgotten

We know that the retention rate for lectures is less than 20%. Everything that is forgotten the next day or next week is waste. At the end of a four week training program, few participants can remember what happened on the first few days.

2. Waiting Time

Companies often wait until they have enough employees to make up a class. Waiting time is often weeks or months. If the training is really important, waiting time will have a direct effect on performance.

3. Old Stuff

When training programs aren’t frequently updated, they become filled with out-of-date information, processes that have changed or are no longer used and old procedures. Take a blue pencil to these items or toss them in the trash because they are now waste.

4. Overstuffing

When you set a limited amount of time for a training program such as a day or week, there is always an urge to maximize participant time at the expense of what can actually be learned. Over time, more and more gets stuffed into the program. Imagine a week of sales training that includes the sales process, listening, communications skills, negotiating, product training, time management, prospecting, proposal writing, and presentation skills. Very little of this training will end up being used because it’s too much, too soon with too little practice. Most of it becomes waste.

5. Tests

Paper and pencil tests are relatively easy to score and easy to create. They are almost always about testing knowledge. However, there is often no correlation between doing well on a test and doing well on the job. These type of tests are often waste. Evaluating participants on-the-job is a more useful way of connecting the classroom and work.

Quality principles are usually applied to everything else in an organization than training. That includes quality training. It’s usually done the old fashion way. So here’s one thought. In a Kaizen event, one of the activities is to search out and eliminate waste or extra steps in a process.

What is the waste in training? I’d start with everything that is taught that no one remembers the next day. We know from most research that’s about 80% of lectures. How about an example of extra steps? Think of all the retraining or refresher training that happens because people are doing or following the first training. Doing the training right and make sure you get the results you want before you stop can eliminate a lot of steps.

Welcome!

This blog is focused on anything related to learning faster. From time to time, I'll be posting about my book Learning Paths: Increase profits by reducing the time it takes to get up-to-speed (Pfeiffer 2004).
Email me!